Hidden
Holocaust, USA

“I’ve
had grown men wet this floor with tears, begging for a job. We have
to pray with some to keep them from killing themselves. So many say
they just want to die,” says Charlie Tarrance, a director of a private
social agency. His task is to deal with growing lines of despairing
people looking for jobs, housing, and food. The place is Gadsden, Alabama,
but it could be anywhere in the United States.

It could
be Washington, D.C., at a Safeway supermarket a mile or so from the
White House where an elderly man is crying and holding a can of dog
food. When asked what's wrong, he says, “I’m hungry. I’m hungry.”

It could
be New York City, where a woman begins screaming at the landlord
who
evicts her and her several children. The Bureau of Child Welfare takes
her children, which distresses her all the more. She herself is transported
to a New York mental hospital crying angrilyonly to be diagnosed
and
committed by the all-knowing psychiatrists as a "paranoid schizophrenic."

There
is misery and cruelty in the land. As U.S. leaders move determinedly
toward their free-market Final Solution, stories abound of hunger, pain,
and desperation. Such things have existed for a long time. Social pathology
is as much a part of this society as crime and capitalism. But life
is getting ever more difficult for many.

Some Grim Statistics

Conservatives
are fond of telling us what a wonderful, happy, prosperous nation this
is. The only thing that matches their love of country is the remarkable
indifference they show toward the people who live in it. To their ears
the anguished cries of the dispossessed sound like the peevish whines
of malcontents. They denounce as "bleeding hearts" those of us who criticize
existing conditions, who show some concern for our fellow citizens. But
the dirty truth is that there exists a startling amount of hardship, abuse,
affliction, illness, violence, and pathology in this country. The figures
reveal a casualty list that runs into many millions. Consider the following
estimates. In any one year:

1,000+
die from sniffing household substances found under the kitchen sink.
About 20 percent of all eighth-graders have "huffed" toxic substances.
Thousands suffer permanent neurological damage.

31,450,000
use marijuana; 3,000,000 of whom are heavy usuers.

37,000,000,
or one out of every six Americans, regularly use emotion controlling
medical drugs. The users are mostly women. The pushers are doctors;
the suppliers are pharmaceutical companies; the profits are stupendous.

2,000,000
nonhospitalized persons are given powerful mind-control drugs, sometimes
described as "chemical straitjackets."

5,000
die from psychoactive drug treatments.

200,000
are subjected to electric shock treatments that are injurious to the
brain and nervous system.

600
to 1,000 are lobotomized, mostly women.

25,000,000,
or one out of every 10 Americans, seek help from psychiatric, psychotherapeutic,
or medical sources for mental and emotional problems, at a cost of
over $4 billion annually.

6,800,000
turn to nonmedical services, such as ministers, welfare agencies,
and social counselors for help with emotional troubles. In all, some
80,000,000 have sought some kind of psychological counseling in their
lifetimes.

1,300,000
suffer some kind of injury related to treatment at hospitals.

126,000
children are born with a major birth defect, mostly due to insufficient
prenatal care, nutritional deficiency, environmental toxicity, or
maternal drug addiction.

2,900,000
children are reportedly subjected to serious neglect or abuse, including
physical torture and deliberate starvation.

5,000
children are killed by parents or grandparents.

30,000
or more children are left permanently physically disabled from abuse
and neglect. Child abuse in the United States afflicts more children
each year than leukemia, automobile accidents, and infectious diseases
combined. With growing unemployment, incidents of abuse by jobless
parents is increasing dramatically.

1,000,000
children run away from home, mostly because of abusive treatment,
including sexual abuse, from parents and other adults. Of the many
sexually abused children among runaways, 83 percent come from white
families.

150,000
children are reported missing.

50,000
of these simply vanish. Their ages range from one year to mid-teens.
According to the New York Times, "Some of these are dead, perhaps
half of the John and Jane Does annually buried in this country are
unidentified kids."

900,000
children, some as young as seven years old, are engaged in child labor
in the United States, serving as underpaid farm hands, dishwashers,
laundry workers, and domestics for as long as ten hours a day in violation
of child labor laws.

2,000,000
to 4,000,00 women are battered. Domestic violence is the single largest
cause of injury and second largest cause of death to U.S. women.

60,000
are killed by toxic environmental pollutants or contaminants in food,
water, or air.

4,000
die from eating contaminated meat.

20,000
others suffer from poisoning by E.coli 0157-H7, the mutant bacteria
found in contaminated meat that generally leads to lifelong physical
and mental health problems. A more thorough meat inspection with new
technologies could eliminate most instances of contamination--so would
vegetarianism.

At present:

5,100,000
are behind bars or on probation or parole; 2,700,000 of these are
either locked up in county, state or federal prisons or under legal
supervision. Each week 1,600 more people go to jail than leave. The
prison population has skyrocketed over 200 percent since 1980. Over
40 percent of inmates are jailed on nonviolent drug related crimes.
African Americans constitute 13 percent of drug users but 35 percent
of drug arrests, 55 percent of drug convictions and 74 percent of
prison sentences. For nondrug offenses, African Americans get prison
terms that average about 10 percent longer than Caucasians for similar
crimes.

15,000+
have tuberculosis, with the numbers growing rapidly; 10,000,000 or
more carry the tuberculosis bacilli, with large numbers among the
economically deprived or addicted.

10,000,000
people have serious drinking problems; alcoholism is on the rise.

16,000,000
have diabetes, up from 11,000,000 in 1983 as Americans get more sedentary
and sugar addicted. Left untreated, diabetes can lead to blindness,
kidney failure and nerve damage.

160,000
will die from diabetes this year.

280,000
are institutionalized for mental illness or mental retardation. Many
of these are forced into taking heavy doses of mind control drugs.

255,000
mentally ill or retarded have been summarily released in recent years.
Many of the "deinstitutionalized" are now in flophouses or wandering
the streets.

3,000,000
or more suffer cerebral and physical handicaps including paralysis,
deafness, blindness, and lesser disabilities. A disproportionate number
of them are poor. Many of these disabilities could have been corrected
with early treatment or prevented with better living conditions.

2,400,000
million suffer from some variety of seriously incapacitating chronic
fatigue syndrome.

10,000,000+
suffer from symptomatic asthma, an increase of 145 percent from 1990
to 1995, largely due to the increasingly polluted quality of the air
we breathe.

40,000,000
or more are without health insurance or protection from catastrophic
illness.

1,800,000
elderly who live with their families are subjected to serious abuse
such as forced confinement, underfeeding, and beatings. The mistreatment
of elderly people by their children and other close relatives grows
dramatically as economic conditions worsen.

1,126,000
of the elderly live in nursing homes. A large but undetermined number
endure conditions of extreme neglect, filth, and abuse in homes that
are run with an eye to extracting the highest possible profit.

1,000,000
or more children are kept in orphanages, reformatories, and adult
prisons. Most have been arrested for minor transgressions or have
committed no crime at all and are jailed without due process. Most
are from impoverished backgrounds. Many are subjected to beatings,
sexual assault, prolonged solitary confinement, mind control drugs,
and in some cases psychosurgery.

1,000,000
are estimated to have AIDS as of 1996; over 250,000 have died of that
disease.

950,000
school children are treated with powerful mind control drugs for “hyperactivity”
every year--with side effects like weight loss, growth retardation
and acute psychosis.

4,000,000
children are growing up with unattended learning disabilities.

4,500,000+
children, or more than half of the 9,000,000 children on welfare,
suffer from malnutrition. Many of these suffer brain damage caused
by prenatal and infant malnourishment.

40,000,000
persons, or one of every four women and more than one of every ten
men, are estimated to have been sexually molested as children, most
often between the ages of 9 and 12, usually by close relatives or
family acquaintances. Such abuse almost always extends into their
early teens and is a part of their continual memory and not a product
of memory retrieval in therapy.

7,000,000
to 12,000,000 are unemployed; numbers vary with the business cycle.
Increasing numbers of the chronically unemployed show signs of stress
and emotional depression.

6,000,000
are in “contingent” jobs, or jobs structured to last only temporarily.
About 60 percent of these would prefer permanent employment.

15,000,000
or more are part-time or reduced-time “contract” workers who need
full-time jobs and who work without benefits.

3,000,000
additional workers are unemployed but uncounted because their unemployment
benefits have run out, or they never qualified for benefits, or they
have given up looking for work, or they joined the armed forces because
they were unable to find work.

80,000,000
live on incomes estimated by the U.S. Department of Labor as below
a “comfortable adequacy”; 35,000,000 of these live below the poverty
level.

12,000,000
of those at poverty’s rock bottom suffer from chronic hunger and malnutrition.
The majority of the people living at or below the poverty level experience
hunger during some portion of the year.

2,000,000
or more are homeless, forced to live on the streets or in makeshift
shelters.

160,000,000+
are members of households that are in debt, a sharp increase from
the 100 million of less than a decade ago. A majority indicate they
have borrowed money not for luxuries but for necessities. Mounting
debts threaten a financial crack-up in more and more families.

A Happy Nation?

Obviously
these estimates include massive duplications. Many of the 20 million unemployed
are among the 35 million below the poverty level. Many of the malnourished
children are also among those listed as growing up with untreated learning
disabilities and almost all are among the 35 million poor. Many of the
37 million regular users of mind-control drugs also number among the 25
million who seek psychiatric help.

Interesting read: Concerned friends and family can always call a hotline for substance abusers if they really are bent on helping a drug-addicted loved one out.

Some of
these deprivations and afflictions are not as serious as others. The
80 million living below the “comfortably adequate” income level may
compose too vague and inclusive a category for some observers (who themselves
enjoy a greater distance from the poverty line). The 40 million who
are without health insurance are not afflicted by an actual catastrophe
but face only a potential one (though the absence of health insurance
often leads to a lack of care and eventually a serious health crisis).
We might not want to consider the 5.5 million arrested as having endured
a serious affliction, but what of the 1.5 million who are serving time
and what of their victims? We might want to count only the 150,000 who
suffer a serious job-related disability rather than the five million
on-the-job injuries, only half of the 20 million unemployed and underemployed
so as not to duplicate poverty figures, only 10 percent of the 1.1 million
institutionalized elderly as mistreated (although the number is probably
higher), only 10 per cent of the 37 million regular users of medically
prescribed psychogenic drugs as seriously troubled, only 5 per cent
of the 160 million living in indebted families as seriously indebted
(although the number is probably higher).

If we
consider only those who have endured physical or sexual abuse, or have
been afflicted with a serious disability, or a serious deprivation such
as malnutrition and homelessness, only those who face untimely deaths
due to suicide, murder, battering, drug and alcohol abuse, industrial
and motor vehicle accidents, medical (mis)treatment, occupational illness,
and sexually transmitted diseases, we are still left with a staggering
figure of over 19,000,000 victims. To put the matter in some perspective,
in the 12 years that saw 58,000 Americans killed in Vietnam, several
million died prematurely within the United States from unnatural and
often violent causes.

Official
bromides to the contrary, we are faced with a hidden holocaust, a social
pathology of staggering dimensions. Furthermore, the above figures do
not tell the whole story. In almost every category an unknown number
of persons go unreported. For instance, the official tabulation of 35
million living in poverty is based on census data that undercount transients,
homeless people, and those living in remote rural and crowded inner-city
areas. Also, the designated poverty line is set at an unrealistically
low income level and takes insufficient account of how inflation especially
affects the basics of food, fuel, housing, and health care that consume
such a disproportionate chunk of lower incomes. Some economists estimate
that actually as many as 46 million live in conditions of acute economic
want.

Left uncounted
are the more than two thousand yearly deaths in the U.S. military due
to training and transportation accidents, and the many murders and suicides
in civilian life that are incorrectly judged as deaths from natural
causes, along with the premature deaths from cancer caused by radioactive
and other carcinogenic materials in the environment. Almost all cancer
deaths are now thought to be from human-made causes.

Fatality
figures do not include the people who are incapacitated and sickened
from the one thousand potentially toxic additional chemicals that industry
releases into the environment each year, and who die years later but
still prematurely. At present there are at least 51,000 industrial toxic
dump sites across the country that pose potentially serious health hazards
to communities, farmlands, water tables, and livestock. One government
study has concluded that the air we breathe, the water we drink, and
the food we eat are now perhaps the leading causes of death in the United
States.

None of
these figures include the unhappiness, bereavement, and longterm emotional
wounds inflicted upon the many millions of loved ones, friends, and
family members who are close to the victims.

Public Policy,
Personal Pain

If things
are so bad, why then has the U.S. mortality rate been declining? The decline
over the last half-century has been due largely to the dramatic reduction
in infant mortality and the containment of many contagious diseases, largely
through improvement in public health standards. Furthermore, years of
industrial struggle by working people, especially in the twentieth century,
brought a palpable betterment in certain conditions. In other words, as
bad as things are now, in earlier times some things were even worse. For
example, about 14,000 persons are killed on the job annually, but in 1916
the toll was 35,000, with the labor force less than half what it is today.

The growth
in health consciousness that has led millions to quit smoking, exercise
more regularly, and have healthier diets also has reduced mortality
rates, especially among those over 40. The 55-mile per hour speed limit
and the crackdown on drunken driving contributed by cutting into highway
fatalities. But the cancer death rate and most of the other pathologies
and life diminishing conditions listed earlier continue in an upward
direction. Small wonder the climb in life expectancy has leveled off
to a barely perceptible crawl in recent years.

When compared
to other nations, we discover we are not as Number One-ish as we might
think. The U.S. infant mortality rate is higher than in thirteen other
countries. And in life expectancy, 20-year-old U.S. males rank thirty-sixth
among the world’s nations, and 20-year-old females are twenty-first.
The additional tragedy of these statistics is that most of the casualties
are not inevitable products of the human condition, but are due mostly
to the social and material conditions created by our profits-before-people
corporate system. Consider a few examples.

First,
it may be that industrial production will always carry some kind
of
risk, but the present rate of attrition can be largely ascribed to
inadequate safety standards, speedup, and lax enforcement of safety
codes. Better
policies can make a difference. In the chemical industry alone, regulations
put out by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)at
a yearly cost to industry of $140 per worker—brought a 23 percent
drop
in accidents and sickness, averting some 90,000 illnesses and injuries.

OSHA’s
resources are pathetically inadequate. It has only enough inspectors
to visit each workplace once every eighty years. Workplace standards
to control the tens of thousands of toxic substances are issued at the
rate of less than three a year. Even this feeble effort has been more
than business could tolerate. Under the Reagan and Bush administrations,
OSHA began removing protections, exempting most firms from routine safety
inspections, and weakening the cotton dust, cancer, and lead safety
standards, and a worker's right to see company medical records.

Second,
it may be that in any society some children will sicken and die. But
better nutrition and health care make a difference. The Women, Infants
and Children nutrition program (WIC) did cut down on starvation and
hunger. On the other hand, years after passing a law making some thirteen
million children eligible for medical examination and treatment, Congress
discovered that almost 85 percent of the youngsters had been left unexamined,
causing, in the words of a House subcommittee report, “unnecessary crippling,
retardation, or even death of thousands of children.”

Third,
it may be that medical treatment will always have its hazards, but given
the way health care is organized in the United States, money often makes
the difference between life and death. Many sick people die simply because
they receive insufficient care or are treated too late. Health insurance
premiums have risen astronomically and hospital bills have grown five
times faster than the overall cost of living. Yet it is almost universally
agreed that people are not receiving better care, only more expensive
care, and in some areas the quality of care has deteriorated.

Some physicians
have cheated Medicaid and Medicare of hundreds of millions of dollars
by consistently overcharging for services and tests; fraudulently billing
for nonexistent patients or for services not rendered; charging for
unneeded treatments, tests, and hospital admissions—and most unforgivable
of all—performing unnecessary surgery. Meanwhile, private health insurance
companies make profits by raising premiums and withholding care. So
people are paying more than ever for health insurance while getting
less than ever.

Fourth,
it may be that automobile accidents are unavoidable in any society with
millions of motor vehicles, but why have we become increasingly dependent
on this costly, dangerous, and ecologically disastrous form of transportation?
In transporting people, one railroad or subway car can do the work of
fifty automobiles. Railroads consume a sixth of the energy used by trucks
to transport goods.

These
very efficiencies are what make railroads so undesirable to the oil
and auto lobbies. For over a half-century, giant corporations like General
Motors, Standard Oil of California, and Firestone Tires bought up most
of the nation's clean and safe electric streetcar networks, dismantled
them, and cut back on all public transportation, thereby forcing people
to rely more and more on private cars. The monorail in Japan, a commuter
train that travels much faster than any train, has transported some
three billion passengers without an injury or fatality. The big oil
and auto companies in the U.S. have successfully blocked the construction
of monorails here.

In ways
not yet mentioned corporate and public policies gravely affect private
lives. Birth deformities, for instance, are not just a quirk of nature,
as the heartbroken parents of Love Canal or the thalidomide children
can testify. Many such defects are caused by fast-buck companies that
treat our environment like a septic tank. Unsafe products are another
cause; there are hundreds of hair dyes, food additives, cosmetics, and
medicines marketed for quick profits which have been linked to cancer,
birth defects, and other illnesses.

The food
industry, seeking to maximize profits, offers ever increasing amounts
of highly processed, chemicalized, low-nutrition foods. Bombarded by
junk-food advertising over the last thirty years, TV viewers, especially
younger ones, have changed their eating habits dramatically. Per capita
consumption of vegetables and fruits is down 20 to 25 per cent while
consumption of cakes, pastry, soft drinks, and other snacks is up 70
to 80 per cent. According to a U.S. Senate report, the increased consumption
of junk foods “may be as damaging to the nation's health as the widespread
contagious diseases of the early part of the century.” All this may
start showing up on the actuarial charts when greater numbers of the
younger junk-food generation move into middle age.

In 1995-96,
a Republican-controlled Congress pushed for further cuts in environmental
and consumer safety standards and in the regulation of industry, cuts
in various public health programs, and cuts in nutritional programs
for children and pregnant women. State and local governments are also
cutting back on public protection programs and human services in order
to pay the enormous sums owed to the banks and to compensate for reductions
in federal aid. Thus New York City took such “economy measures” as closing
all of its venereal disease clinics and most of its drug rehabilitation
and health centers.

We are
told that wife-beating, child abuse, alcoholism, drug abuse, and other
such pathologies know no class boundaries and are found at all income
levels. This is true but misleading. The impression left is that these
pathologies are randomly distributed across the social spectrum and
are purely a matter of individual pathology. Actually, many of them
are skewed heavily toward the low-income, the unemployed, and the dispossessed.
As economic conditions worsen, so afflictions increase. Behind many
of these statistics is the story of class, racial, sexual, and age oppressions
that have long been among the legacies of our social order, oppressions
that are seldom discussed in any depth by political leaders, news media,
or educators.

In addition,
more and more middle-income people are hurting from the Third Worldization
of America, suffering from acute stress, alcoholism, job insecurity,
insufficient income, high rents, heavy mortgage payments, high taxes,
and crushing educational and medical costs. And almost all of us eat
the pesticide-ridden foods, breathe the chemicalized air, and risk drinking
the toxic water and being exposed to the contaminating wastes of our
increasingly chemicalized, putrefied environment. I say “almost all
of us” because the favored few live on country estates, ranches, seashore
mansions, and summer hideaways where the air is relatively fresh. And,
like President Reagan, they eat only the freshest food and meat derived
from organically fed steers that are kept free of chemical hormones—while
telling the rest of us not to get hysterical about pesticides and herbicides
and chemical additives.

All this
explains why many of us find little cause for rejoicing about America
the Beautiful. It is not that we don’t love our country, but that we
do. We love not just an abstraction called “the USA’ but the people
who live in it. And we believe that the pride of a nation should not
be used to hide the social and economic disorder that is its shame.
The American dream is becoming a nightmare for many. A concern for collective
betterment, for ending the abuses of free-market plunder, is of the
utmost importance. “People before profits” is not just a slogan, it
is our only hope.